Liberate And Educate

How this external mission can actually transform your business forever.

On today’s episode Russell talks to us all the way from Kenya about the importance of doing good in the world after you have made a lot of money. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode:

How Russell has been able to help the less fortunate by being successful in business.

Why after this trip he will be focusing more on his new mantra, to liberate and educate.

And why helping serve people who don’t necessarily do anything for you can actually help motivate you to become more successful.

So listen here to find out how Russell plans to continue to liberate and educate children and why he’s going to start focusing on that aspect even more.

Full Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, I am in the middle of a village in Kenya right now, and I wanted to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast.

Hey everyone, so I am about to start packing up my bags after spending three days here in a little community called Ndatho, I’m probably going to pronounce that wrong. This has been a really special trip, this is actually, those who don’t know, this is my third time coming to Kenya. We came the first time in 2012 and it was the first time I’d ever been in a country like Kenya and it was this emotional, crazy experience, and we fell in love with the children and the people here.

In fact, we met a little girl here, that first time. Her name was Jane, who became almost like a daughter to us. And as we went home we ended up keeping communication with her, and she was I think 13 years old at the time. And that was the first time we came to Kenya. And two years ago we weren’t really planning on coming back again, but actually Dylan Jones, who was one of the initial cofounders of Clickfunnels, he was supposed to come on the trip and I think he forgot to get his shots or something in time, I don’t know what it was. But we still had our shots from 4 years earlier, raging through our blood, so they let us come back. They needed someone to take the spot that Dylan had paid for. So we with a weeks notice jumped and came back out and just came for three days just to be with the kids.

And it was amazing, we got there and Jane had graduated from the school and she was going to secondary school, which is like the high school. So she came back to the village and saw my wife and it was this amazing emotional experience, my wife was bawling her eyes out and crying, and it was an amazing experience. So that was two years ago.

And then at Funnel Hacking Live two years ago, we made an offer where we said, “Hey if you guys want to actually come to Kenya with us and build schools with us, you can do it.” So we had about 15 or so people who each paid about 20 thousand dollars to build a classroom in Kenya, and so collectively it was enough to build an entire school, and we were supposed to come out last year, but the trip was set at a time where there turned out to be some political elections and things, so we ended up canceling the trip and moving it to right now.

So right now we’re here with a bunch of the donors from Funnel Hacking Live and they all had a chance for the last three days to see their actual school, in fact I’m looking at it right now. If you’ve been following me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve probably seen videos and pictures of it. But it’s beautiful.

So we got to dedicate the school yesterday, we had a big celebration and it was cool. But actually, let me step back. I could tell you guys stories for hours, but I have to start packing in the next 5 minutes. So this will be a little short and condensed, but there’s a couple of messages I wanted to share before I left this beautiful place and forgot.

So this time when we came in, Collette and I came in a day early because now Jane, we’ve been funding her to go to college. So she’s actually in college now, so we came a day early to see her. So we had a chance to, she came to our hotel and we met her, and it’s just amazing to see this progression in 6 years of this little girl who had nothing in this little village, who is just getting the ability to learn for the first time because we built this school here. And now six years later, she’s in college and she got a job as a model. And she’s doing this modeling thing, we’re actually helping her to fly to Germany to compete in a modeling competition in Germany later this year.

And she took us to her home, which her home is probably 300 square feet, maybe. Maybe 350 if you count the bathrooms and stuff, which the bathroom is literally 2 ft by 2 ft room with a toilet and then there’s a shower above the toilet. It’s crazy. And she was so proud of it, and she wanted to show us and she wanted us to be proud of her, that she had her own little home and she could cook her own food. She took us to her school and we met her principle and saw the classrooms, and it was just so cool to see her and how she just wanted us to be proud of her, which we are. It was just such a cool experience.

Alright, so let me fast forward to the last 3 days here. So we’ve been here in this community, and we got to help paint the school and help build these brick paths, doing all this manual labor, but the best part is the kids. There’s about 250 kids that now attend this school we built. So we’re were playing with them, wrestling with them, we were playing soccer with them. I taught them dog pile, which means I run and I bend over and all 250 or so jump on my back at once. I’m so sore today.

Anyway, it’s just been an amazing experience. Then yesterday they had this really cool celebration where the government officials came in and the community came in, about 5 or 600 people were here and we got to dedicate the school. It was cool because they asked if Collette and I would actually speak at the dedication, so there was an interpreter there for us and we got to stand up and I told the story of why I’m here. I told the story about how basically ten years ago Stu McLaren and Amy, his wife, had a vision for this thing where they were going to build school in Kenya and he called me up and told me the vision.

Six years ago Stu brought me here, and I told him how we fell in love with the Kenyan people and how when we went back home we told our community, the funnel hacking, Clickfunnels community about what was happening here. And for those of you who don’t know, some of you guys know this, but every time you build a funnel inside of Clickfunnels and you set the funnel live, we actually donate a dollar toward World Teacher Aid. So every time you’re building in Clickfunnels, you’re actually helping build schools.

And I told them there’s 10s of thousands of entrepreneurs who every single day are trying to grow their own companies and when they do that, they are investing here in this community because they love you guys as well. For example, last year alone at Funnel Hacking Live we gave, it used be called World Teacher Aid, they changed the name to Village Impact. But we gave Village Impact a check for over $120-130 thousand dollars. And that comes from all of you guys building funnels.

So we gave them…told them about that and I said there’s some donors who loved you guys so much they wanted to come and I introduced them to the donors that came. Anyway, it was just a really special, special moment.

But this is what I wanted to share, actually there’s two more things that I wanted to share. So the first one, as I’m sitting there during the ceremony, I’m thinking about, there’s two charities as you guys know, that I participate in, that I believe in. One is Operation Underground Railroad, which is the charity that we’ve been working with that saves children from human trafficking, sex slavery. And then the other one is Village Impact, which helps to build schools and educate children in these third world countries. And I was sitting there thinking, how do these things tie together? I’m drawn to both of them so strongly, how do these things fit together. And all the sudden the two words that came to my mind were liberation and education.

I just remember thinking, that’s what we’re doing. We’re liberating children and then we’re educating children. I thought, what greater mission in the world is there than to liberate children from evil people and then to educate children so they can change their world as they grow up?

It just got me excited, I think that moving forward, that’s going to be a big part of my philanthropy or charity or whatever you want to call it side, of me and my businesses, that mantra of liberation and education. Let’s liberate and educate children, because if you can liberate a child and give them a life and then you can educate a child so they can create their own life, what better mission can we have on this earth than that?

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you. Liberate and educate children, that’s what my focus is moving forward, and you’ll see a lot more of that at Funnel Hacking Live and moving forward. In fact, I’m already envisioning a t-shirt that says Liberate on one sleeve and educate on the other sleeve. One with the OUR logo and one with the Village Impact logo, and then it’d be Funnel Hackers in the middle bridging the gap between these two vital, important missions. So excited.

Alright, so one more story I’m going to tell you and then I will wrap it up for today because I’m already over my time limit and I’m probably going to miss the bus, the ride home tonight in Nairobi, if I don’t hurry.

After the ceremony ended yesterday, I was on Voxer and I was kind of working on a really cool funnel you guys will see soon, so I was kind of giving some feedback to some people. And as I’m doing that, I look up and there’s this man walking toward me and he’s got a backpack on and he’s got a suit on and he’s 33 years old and he’s walking towards me. I look up and just doing my think and I look a little closer and he’s looking right at me and he’s got a kind of smile on his face, and I’m looking and all the sudden I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s Leonard.” So I put my phone down and come run and give him a huge hug.

Some of the back story on Leonard is, as we were helping Jane in college about two and a half, three years ago, Jane who I mentioned earlier, we asked Irene, who is one of the main people here in Kenya on the ground that runs the whole Village Impact mission. Collette had this impression, “Is there another kid, someone else? We want to help one more person. Is there one more person we could help?” And Irene said, “Well actually, there is this boy. He’s a hard worker, right now he’s in the community, he’s volunteer teaching for free. He’s got a wife and 5 kids and he was studying in school to be a doctor, like microbiology and things like that basically he had done 2 ½ years of his schooling but he had to drop out because they had no more money to keep funding it, and now he was back in the village volunteering and working and trying to help serve the community. He’s a hard worker who got really high grades and would love to go back to school.”

So Collette said yes. Then she came to me and said, “Hey, there’s this other kid we’re going to help. It’s like $800 a semester for him to go to school and he’s got, I can’t remember, 5 or 6 semesters left. So I sent the money for him to finish his schooling.” So for us it’s like $2500-3000 bucks or whatever it was. Not something we think about. Just here you go. And we gave the money and it was for this boy Leonard who is an amazing human, 5 kids, just such a cool guy.

So I see him and he gives me a huge hug and starts telling me this story from the very beginning. He says, “Okay…” and he starts talking about what was happening and the village he was in and the government moved him out of his village and then he fought to get back in school and he worked all year round to raise funds for school and then he went to a semester and then he had to work for another year to raise funds to go to another semester and all these things.

And finally when school got ripped away from him the last time, and he couldn’t raise funds anymore. And he said that one day he was with his family and they were out in the field getting food for their family and he got this phone call from Irene. He said that on the phone call Irene said, “Hey, I found some donors who want to sponsor you for school and they’ve already wired the money and it’s an account and you can start school.” And he said he sat there in this field with his kids just crying that there was somebody on earth that cared enough about him and his family to do this.

He said, “I told myself and I told my family that because somebody cared this much I was not going to relax, I’m going to do my best and get the highest grades possible.” So he went back to school and over the next 2 ½ years or so, he got his degree, he got honors, he was the top three, out of all the classes I think he was the second or third highest marks.

And what was crazy, he actually yesterday morning had jumped in a motorcycle and driven for 4 hours just to see us. And the streets here aren’t like the streets in America, these are roads with 4 foot potholes, it’s crazy. It’s not an easy drive. He drove 4 hours to get here to come and to tell me this story and then afterwards he opened up his backpack and he pulled out his diploma, and he wanted me to see his diploma because he was so proud of it.

And we looked at his diploma and Collette and I both just gave him a hug, we were so proud of him. And then what he said that was so powerful, he said “Every single night my wife and my 5 kids we pray for you in America. We pray for the people who cared enough about our family to help support us.” And it brought tears to my eyes just thinking, you think about everyday struggles we’re dealing with, how powerful to have family or families on the other side of the world who are so clean and so pure and so, such good people who are praying for us to survive and to thrive and to do good because we serve them.

We literally changed not just his life, but he told us after he graduated he said he went back to the school, which was a school Village Impact had built, and he said, “I wore all my robes and we had a huge celebration and the government came out and told all the kids that because I was successful, because I got a degree, all of you guys could get degrees. Now there’s an entire community of kids who believe they can get a degree because you believed that I could get a degree.” It was just such a special, special thing.

I know this isn’t me teaching you a marketing secret or anything, but I kind of indirectly am. I promise you guys as you start shifting your focus from yourselves to your customers, I think that’s the first level, you will start seeing your businesses grow. What I mean by that is most entrepreneurs start typically from a selfish standpoint, “I want to make money.” Which is not bad, that’s what gets most of us enough desire to get through the pain that it takes to get one of these things running. But the people who grow are the ones who very quickly shift from a me focus, to “Oh my gosh, I’m serving these people and this is amazing.” And that becomes the focus, serving other people.

I think the third tier after that, is when you start looking outside of just your customers. You look outside of yourself, outside of your customers to how can you have a greater impact on people who can’t necessarily do anything for you, other than pray for you, which is amazing.

I look at my business, I look at the blessings that I receive daily, and I think a huge piece of that is because I’ve been willing to give time and money to people like this and now because I was willing to do that I have an army of people around the world who are praying for our success, who are praying for my family, who are praying for my marriage, who are praying for my business, who are praying that I will continue to be successful because I cared enough to try to change their world.

So for you guys, I just want you guys to think about that as you’re looking through your own personal evolution. Initially it’s you, then it’s your customers, then it’s outside of that. How can you help? I always get nervous sharing these kind of things, I don’t know. I like bragging about my customers, I don’t like bragging about charity stuff, and that’s not the point of this. The point is hopefully to inspire you guys to do more of it. Because I promise you having an army of people on the other side of the world praying for you is a powerful force.

So again, my new mission after this trip is to liberate and educate children. And I will continue to have ways that you guys can participate in that vision and that mission if you feel like I do. On the OUR side, we have ourfilm.org, you can go watch that and that will help you to learn how to liberate children. And we’re going to be putting out some really cool funnels on the education side with World Teacher Aid as well, so you can, and I’ll announce some of those when we get home, and you can see how to help on the education side as well.

But find a mission like that. Stu talked about this yesterday. Anissa who came from our Clickfunnels community here to Kenya as well, she talked about it as well. You know a lot of us feel guilt, internal, subconscious guilt when we start making money that holds us back. And I think when you start realizing the more money you make the bigger impact you can have, that’s when you start getting free.

Stu talked about he had all these mental barriers, because subconsciously he felt guilt about making money, making money and he couldn’t get past certain levels. And then he started shifting to helping other people and he realized, the more money I make the more people I can help. Then those subconscious beliefs disappeared and he was able to grow his company to the levels he wanted to and needed to. I think the same thing is true for all of you guys as well.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you guys today. I’m looking at all these kids, probably 100 kids right now watching me, waiting for us to come play. So I have to finish packing my bags so I can come play with the kids. And then we’re headed back to Nairobi and then after that we’re heading to a safari for a couple of days, which will be really neat as well. But nothing is as good as these first three days where we get to play with the kids and be here in the village.

So there you go guys, appreciate you all. Thanks for listening. Hopefully this helps shape and helps focus your vision because while it may not seem like it has anything to do with business, it has everything to do with the business. Thanks so much for listening you guys, and we will talk to you soon. Bye.

Who is Russell Brunson?

Over the past 10 years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.